Category: Design For Animation

This week we looked at the audio presentation we have to do alongside our essay. I figured the best order for me to do this would be to do the essay first and then cordinate my presentation around my essay.

I worked more on my essay this week also. I researched more into what a literature review entailed and worked on the start of this:

Literature review

When approaching research for this topic, I decided to use a variety of opinions and methods of conclusions. I wanted to find a source in which aligned with my view of appeal within video games follows the path of amount of immersion. Christou (2014) had a scientific approach to this relationship and with reading his study I found that the study had concluded a linear correlation, which supported my statement. Another point of view I wanted to study was a very general one, looking at visual effects in games and I found that environments was something discussed. X. Yang, M. Yip and X. Xu (2009) also had a positive view on the addition of visual effects in which I could further use as an example of my question proposed. This journal also included many of my keywords I had established would be talked about prior to my research, with ‘atmosphere’ of games being explored in detail. Furthermore, this piece of text gave me ideas as to which details of visual effects I could use as a focal point. Lighting and shading were linked to the keyword ‘atmosphere’, heavily indicating that these elements are linked. Another source I found in my research was directly linked to the environments in games, focusing in on what makes these immersive for players. This source enabled me to view a more detailed perspective on the effects environments have on games, enabling me to see the direction my question would take in terms of environmental design within games. I concluded that environments are portrayed in this source as a layer to games which controls a lot of the gameplay, even stated as promising “a new kind of gameplay challenge” (Chang 2011). My research that followed this consisted of zoning into the examples I wanted to include. I found few sources linked directly to these games and digital environments within, however I figured that with my other sources at play, I would be able to look at the games separately, and find a meeting point for these points of research to meet within my essay. An example of a specific source would be what Niedenthal wrote in 2009, they refer to the environments of ‘Resident Evil’ as ‘gothic’ a lot, a key word that would be explored in my essay. This opened up a discussion for how visual effects contributes to this, and how it improves the players experience having such a memorable environment in a game series. With sources from the directions of where my essay question was built from, I was able to find a middle point where these all contributed to my overall argument and help me form my essay.

Alenda Y. Chang. “Games as Environmental Texts.” Qui Parle, vol. 19, no. 2, 2011, pp. 56–84. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5250/quiparle.19.2.0057. Accessed 23 Nov. 2022.

Christou, G., 2014. The interplay between immersion and appeal in video games. Computers in human behaviour, 32, pp.92-100.

Niedenthal, S., 2009. Patterns of obscurity: Gothic setting and light in Resident Evil 4 and Silent Hill 2. Horror video games: Essays on the fusion of fear and play.

X. Yang, M. Yip and X. Xu, “Visual Effects in Computer Games,” in Computer, vol. 42, no. 7, pp. 48-56, July 2009, doi: 10.1109/MC.2009.240.

This is just the start as alongisde my abrsract, this will be a work in progress.

I also looked back on my previous refeences and reviewed if I would be using these in my essay. I have a total of 6 references so far, so I concluded I need to find a few more to use within this essay.

This week I ran through my introduction with my tutor, and got some feedback on how I could improve on this first part of my essay.

Below are the improvements implemented within my introduction.

Immersion in games is debated to be what makes them so successful. The nature of video games is the promise to take the player to ‘another world’ through gameplay, and therefore the upmost effort in digital worldmaking has only increased as the demand for this aspect within games has grown too. In 2014, an author named Georgios Christou, did a study to back this statement, with the results being “It is found that immersion and appeal are linearly correlated” (Christou, 2014), with the higher the immersion through game type and experience, the higher the appeal rate. This is no surprise, given that video games offer an escape from daily life, transporting players through visual and audio means into a world of fantasy, horror, and anything in-between. To do this though, and to create this immersion and appeal positive correlation, we can investigate the vitality of certain aspects within a game. Environments are the basis of worldmaking within a game, mapping out the areas and the world in which a player is within during their experience. These environments are unique and create a certain atmosphere we can feel through separate games, through lighting, buildings, terrain, and weather. Visual effects offer a more realistic and real visual experience to films, games and tv series, and this impacts worldmaking in many ways, especially within the environments around characters.

Christou, G., 2014. The interplay between immersion and appeal in video games. Computers in human behaviour, 32, pp.92-100.

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I also then started on developing my abstract for my essay this week.

Abstract

In this essay I will be discussing how vital visual effects are in creating realistic and therefore immersive environments within survival horror games. I will be looking at this through the lens of visual effect’s relationship with realism and immersion, and how much this adds to a gaming experience. I have concluded that…

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I soon realised that the abstract would be best to write at the end, to ensure that the conclusion lined up with that in my essay. This is a draft abstract and will shape more as I continue to write my essay.

This week we looked at structure for our essay, and writing introductions and conclusions. I have a more clear understanding of what the structure of my essay will be like now, as it is different from essays I have written in the past.

Work from home

With this new information I decided to get started on my essay introduction.

Introduction

Immersion in games is debated to be what makes them so successful. The nature of video games is the promise to take the player to another world through gameplay, and therefore the upmost effort in worldmaking has only increased as the demand for this aspect within games has grown too. Christou did a study in 2014 to back this statement, with the results being “It is found that immersion and appeal are linearly correlated” (Christou, 2014), with the higher the immersion through game type and experience, the higher the appeal rate. This is no surprise, given that video games offer an escape from daily life, transporting players through visual and audio means into a world of fantasy, horror and anything in-between. To do this though, and to create this immersion and appeal positive correlation, we can look into the vitality of certain aspects of a game. Environments are the basis of worldmaking within a game, mapping out the areas and the world in which a player is within during their experience. These environments are unique and create a certain atmosphere we can feel through separate games, through lighting, buildings, terrain and weather. Visual effects offers a more realistic and real visual experience to films, games and tv series, and this impacts worldmaking in many ways, especially within environments around characters.

Christou, G., 2014. The interplay between immersion and appeal in video games. Computers in human behaviour, 32, pp.92-100.

This is a work in progress and not my final introduction for the essay.

This week we teamed up in groups to discuss our progress on topics we have chosen. It was interesting to hear what some people have chosen and how different our topics were.

This week I have also been looking more into research to develop my topic. I have chosen to go ahead with environmental visual effects in games as this interests me the most and has most academic writing I can reference from.

I went on google scholar again and found some more writings that helped me develop my topic:

X. Yang, M. Yip and X. Xu, “Visual Effects in Computer Games,” in Computer, vol. 42, no. 7, pp. 48-56, July 2009, doi: 10.1109/MC.2009.240.

This source talkes about visual effects in games in general, and environmental effects was one of three talked about within games.

• “Environmental effects refer to atmospheric phenomena in the environment, such as clouds, fog, smoke, fire, water, rain, and explosions. These are added into the basic scene to create a particular atmosphere or situation.”

With this, keywords such as ‘atmosphere’ could be something I talk about in my essay.

However, it also included techniques of VFX within games such as lighting and shading to create this atmosphere which makes me more confident in the amount I can talk about in this field.

Alenda Y. Chang. “Games as Environmental Texts.” Qui Parle, vol. 19, no. 2, 2011, pp. 56–84. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5250/quiparle.19.2.0057. Accessed 23 Nov. 2022.

This source also has an overall evalusation of how environments in games are made using visual effects. This is another source I will use in my essay.

Next I looked at sources apparent to the game I wanted to talk about in my essay; Resident Evil.

Weise, M., 2009. The rules of horror: Procedural adaptation in clock tower, resident evil, and dead rising. Horror video games: Essays on the fusion of fear and play, pp.238-266.

Niedenthal, S., 2009. Patterns of obscurity: Gothic setting and light in Resident Evil 4 and Silent Hill 2. Horror video games: Essays on the fusion of fear and play, pp.168-180.

Bilchi, N., 2021. Directorial Style for Interactive Storytelling and the Fallacy of Ownership: The Case of Resident Evil 7. Cinergie–Il Cinema e le altre Arti, (19), pp.83-92.

These sources focus on my topic in terms of evidence I can use for a specific game.

On youtube I found informative videos that will also help me develop my topic such as this:

After this research and advise from my lecturer this week I have found my best title would be “How vital is visual effects in survival horror games such as ‘Resident Evil’ for creating it’s atmospheric environments?”

This week we focused on paraphrasing. We learnt about how to paraphrase, and what is paraphrasing and what is not. If something is paraphrased appropriately, it does not need to be referenced.

We had to paraphrase the quote below in our own words from what we have learnt.

Paraphrased by me:

A documentary inhabits characteristics of realism, as does the images it presents. This can be mesured by proof of events in the images presented, showcasing the connection between the real world and image.

Work from home

I used my time at home to really think more and research on my essay question.

Working titles:

How vital is visual effects in games within the fantasy genre for worldmaking?

How much does worldmaking within games rely on visual effects?

How much does worldmaking within films rely on visual effects?

How much does worldmaking within fantasy tv series rely on visual effects?

The keywords stuck with all these titles is worldmaking and visual effects. Fantasy is also a genre that is present a lot.

I wanted to add a specific series on the last question, BBC’s ‘Merlin’, as that has fantastic worldmaking, but with research on google scholar, I found that there was little works I could reference from about it.

Some other games/films I could research for this include:

Final Fantasy

The Legend of Zelda

World of Warcraft

Life is Strange

Harry Potter

I then thought about having a back up question just in case these were seen to be weak suggestions when I have my one to one tutorial. I thought about my other interests and came to the conclusion other questions could be:

How has environmental animation progressed within survival horror games such as ‘Resident Evil’?

How has environmental VFX progressed within survival horror games such as ‘Resident Evil’?

How has monster design for animation progressed within survival horror games such as ‘Resident Evil’?

How has VFX preogressed in survival horror games to create more immersion?

How has VFX preogressed in survival horror games to create improved worldmaking?

This week, we explored animated documentry and politics in animation.

One of the animation documentaries that stood out to me was A is for Autism (1992).

This was a really creative way to express autism and the animation created a revenue for visual learners to imagine what it must be like for the autistic people narrating the video.

I would say this still counts as a documentary because it is informative, non fictional and made for learning. These characteristics to me apply to documentaries regardless if the visual aspect of the video is animated or not, and if anything, the animation, for me, helped me understand the message better. and didn’t take away from the realism.

Taxonomy of animated documentary says an animated documentary “is about the world rather than a world wholly imagined by its creator”. This applies to this documentary because autism and it’s characteristics are present in the real world, and these are real experiences, not made up.

Christina Formenti and Bill Nichols argue animated documetaries should be based on the autenticity of the images presented, and that there is a lack of objectivity to these, therefore it should be classed as a ‘docu-fiction’. I don’t think this argument alters my opinion due to the fact the animations on screen don’t take away from the informative aspect documentaries should have, and this is what makes a documentary a documentary to me.

This week, we focused on abstraction and experimental films. Early works included the use of ink and prints, in place of modern day visual effects we see presently, to create art forms in film, adverts, and to catch peoples eye. This creative form was interesting to see, as we looked at how people still managed to have creativity on film without the technology. We were asked to find an abstraction film and discuss how it is abstraction, what we liked about it, and what is similar to the types we saw in class.

I did some research and found an early non-narrative experimental film made by Len Lye in 1935. It is called ‘A Colour Box’, and I believe it to be from a conceptual perspective.

What I love about this film is how it is a visual representation of the sound it is playing, it mixes sound art and practical effects such as ink, paint and postal objects. It was funded on the condition Lye would place a postal advertisement at the end. It is bursting with colour and vibrancy throughout, and toys with the idea of colour and art abstraction. The theme of a post office, and arts was apparent throughout, making the use of paints and post etc. have a direct link to the message of the postal advertisment with the actual mediums used within it.

This film origanally divided Britain, some people loved this film and some people hated it, and most likely didn’t get it. However, it ended up winning festival awards and was restored by the British Film Institute.

This film reminded me of the ones we looked at in class due to the early effects made by ink, colour and paints, and how this is really effective in abstract art.

This week we looked at narratives, more specifically story arcs, character archetypes and timelines.

We were given the task of putting this knowlege into a film we have watched and enjoyed:

The Fault in our Stars

Story arc

1. Set up – Girl (Hazel) has cancer and has begun going to a support group.
2. Inciting incident –She meets Augustus and they begin to form a bond.
3. Obstacle to overcome – She wants to meet her favourite author In Amsterdam but her doctor says no.
4. Rising tension – She gets the pass to go so they both travel there.
5. Climax – When they get there he is rude and arrogant, and Augustus admits to being terminal.
6. Falling action – They live with knowing Augustus is going to die and prepare for it.
7. Resolution – Augustus dies.
8. Denouement – The writer is at the funeral and gives Hazel a letter Augustus wrote her and tries to make amends. Hazel goes over memories of Augustus

Character archetypes

• Protagonist – Hazel Grace
• Emerging companion – Augustus Waters
• Antagonist – Peter Van Houten
• Trickster – Isaac
• Guardian – Mrs Lancaster

This week, I developed and organised my thoughts about what possible topic I could use for my essay. I made this small layout of my idea which I posted on padlet.

How vital is animation and visual effects in worldmaking within the fantasy genre?

I will be exploring animation and visual effects (I may narrow this down to one) within fantasy film, tv and games (again, this might be best to narrow down to one form of media). Worldmaking is vital for especially the fantasy genre, due to it being a whole world we are not familiar with, similar to sci-fi. I will be researching how important this is, and what it adds to a form of media using some examples.

Key words:

• Worldmaking
• Creatures
• Fantasy
• Atmosphere
• Immersion

Research of works:

Holliday, Christopher. (2018). “Fantasy/Animation: Connections Between Media, Mediums and Genres”. Routledge.

S. Trowbridge and C. Stapleton. (2009). “Melting the Boundaries Between Fantasy and Reality”. vol. 42, no. 7, pp. 57-62.

Vääräniemi, Tero. (2016). “Example Solutions of Visual Effects in Fantasy Games”. University of Applied Sciences. Available at:  https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/111267/Tero%20Vaaraniemi%20Opari.pdf [Accessed 18 October 2022].

I am also interested in however the topic of: Is child endangerment being worsened by animation and reslistic visual effects?

This is something I will research more and decide which research route to pursue with guidance.